Michel Nischan visits Rainbeau Ridge Farms in upstate New York, an all organic farm dedicated to making and delivering fresh food that is also good for the environment.

Yum, chocolate: is there any substance more synonymous with willful self-indulgence? Yet recent studies have shown it has health effects – and thanks to John and Kira Doyle, now it also has positive social ramifications.

John & Kira's is a Pennsylvania-based company that manufatures high-end chocolates. But instead of a fussily-decorated cardboard, these arrive in a simple pine box adorned with the loveliest of bows, stamped and sealed with wax. Inside lie not the usual drunken cherries or buttercremes, but fresh and fascinating concoctions of lavender, ginger, fresh mint, lemongrass, bergamot… the list is long and eyebrow-raising. The taste isn't traditional, but surprising and fresh.

When it comes to cows, we keep hearing that grass-fed is better than grain-fed. Better for us, better for the cows, better for the environment. Farmers have grazed their cows on grass for centuries, with no need for bovine growth hormones, and no outbreaks of mad cow disease or E. coli.

But the factory farms most of our beef comes from these days aren't really farms at all; they're industrial indoor feedlots called Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, or CAFO's.

You probably never think about it, but that head of lettuce in your crisper drawer was once a tiny seed that some farmer had to sow, a few months ago. and